ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 249 



The object contemplated by the division of the county of Tipperary 

 by the line of railway is to detach that part of it which forms a portion of 

 the valley of the Shannon and the mountain district adjoining from the 

 rich agricultural and tolerably level country of which Cashel occupies 

 nearly the centre. The Galtee Mountains are unavoidably included in the 

 latter section of the county. In the counties of Mayo and Gal way a 

 similar plan has been followed. The boundary proposed will, it is be- 

 lieved, separate the flat parts of them from the highly interesting moun- 

 tainous districts of the west, where a well-marked Flora is known to 

 exist 



Allow me now to point out a mode by which the Association may, 

 perhaps, proceed in preparing materials for a Cybele Hibernica. It 

 would be well to form carefully prepared lists of all the indigenous 

 plants found in each of the twelve provinces, recording in each case the 

 spot where the plant grew, and the county or vice-county in which the 

 plaoe is situated. This will have to be done with great care, in order 

 to avoid the errors resulting from two causes : first, the wish which 

 many collectors have to swell their lists by including in them all the 

 plants that they can find, without considering if the species is likely to 

 be indigenous in the place where they have observed it ; and, secondly, 

 the mistakes often made in the nomenclature of little known, or what are 

 called critical plants. 



Unfortunately, there are other sources of error sometimes (but, hap- 

 pily, not often) met with — I mean intentional deceit and carelessness. 

 In illustration of the first, I may remark that there are in my herbarium 

 specimens of three heaths, given to me by a person who marked, with 

 his own hand upon the tickets, the exact spots where he said he had 

 gathered them ; but which, after having myself carefully examined the 

 places (situated in the south of Ireland), I cajne to the conclusion never 

 grew there ; and I am informed that, although now many years have passed 

 since the event occurred, no one else has succeeded in discovering them 

 in that part of the kingdom. Also, a very rare fern was stated to have 

 been found near Belfast ; nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that 

 it really grew there ; indeed, I think that it was afterwards acknow- 

 ledged to be an imposition. The following is the kind of mistake likely 

 to result from carelessness : — Sometimes collectors are not sufficiently 

 careful to separate foreign cultivated plants from native roots derived 

 from wild stations ; and thus it has happened that they make the mis- 



